Trying to Judge a Russian Book by its Cover.

One of the more interesting parts of my job as a librarian for Mobile Services is going on the monthly Russian Day bookmobile run. We visit six low-income housing buildings in Seattle that have a high number of Russian-speaking residents. We bring books, magazines, and movies in Russian and, most importantly, Leszek, a librarian from the Central Library who specializes in serving Seattle’s Russian-speaking community.

Sometimes, though, Leszek goes on vacation. This is when things can get tricky. Finding the right books for a patron can be difficult in English, but it is especially challenging when there is a language barrier and you can’t even read the titles of the books because your knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet is, shall we say, a trifle limited. That is when the cover art comes in handy. Sort of.

Cookbooks, computer instruction books, and the like are easy to pick out. If the book is a translation of an American novel, it can have the same cover art as the English version. Historical romances frequently feature bodices being ripped, and if there is a guy in a trench coat with a gun on the cover, it is a safe bet that it is a detective novel. Some things, however, do not translate so easily between cultures.